5 Google Adwords Habits You Must Kick to Succeed with Facebook Ads

You launched the first Facebook Ad and jumped right to Analytics – the traffic was about to start rolling.

But … there was nothing.

Each hour passing brought only a trickle of visitors.

And no sales.

What the – ?

But you already rock Adwords.

Your ads drive traffic willing to kill to hit the “buy now” button.

So why such a fail on Facebook?

I’m going to let you onto a secret:

It’s because Facebook Ads is NOT Adwords.

Simply.

The Two Platforms Only Seem Alike

In a nutshell, Google and Facebook’s advertising platforms look similar:

Both allow placing ads to attract traffic.

Offer access to large audiences.

And allow some form of targeting to increase the advertising relevancy.

And yet:

To succeed on Facebook you have to forget many things that helped you succeed on Google.

Here are the most important ones:

1. Stop Focusing on the Buying Intent

The biggest difference between Google and Facebook Ads is the way you target the audience.

On Google, you specifically seek out and target a buying intent:

You perform a thorough keywords research to discover phrases with a commercial intent,

Analyze various metrics to discover conversional and transactional keywords,

Optimize ads to respond to a need based on the buying intent and,

Bid a specific amount to position an ad as high as possible for those phrases.

Google in turn, displays your ad every time a person types in that specific query into the search box.

And thus a connection is made.

Google’s users’ behavior is different too:

Customers use the search engine to find a specific product or service. And they will respond only if the information they’re presented with is relevant.

Displaying ads that match that need and expectation is therefore one of Adwords’ best practices.

But Facebook works on a different premise:

There are no keywords,

Users don’t search for products or services and,

Show no buying intent.

Facebook shows ads based on a user’s demographics and interests.

On Facebook, you advertise to people who aren’t actively looking for your products:

They catch up with friends, post updates, like other posts, comment or chat.

And thus they might only happen to see your ad when it passes through their news stream.

Therefore, to succeed in generating interest and income from Facebook ads, you need to stop thinking buying intent and start thinking:

People.

You need to understand your target audience.

Even though Google allows some demographics targeting, your main focus is on keywords with commercial intent. With the right keywords you can quickly attract the right traffic and generate sales from Adwords ads.

On Facebook however, you need to be laser-focused on the audience that’s most likely to be attracted to your product.

One way to achieve it is by creating a buyer persona –

“A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” (Hubspot).

Buyer personas will help you to identify your target audience’s characteristics, demographics and interests you’ll be able to use to target them with Facebook ads.

Think of personas as your keyword research – the more you know about your audience, their likes, dislikes and other characteristics, the more focused you can in your advertising.

Additional Resources:

4. You’re Not Advertising Only to Sell

Facebook ads on the other hand are equally great to drive product or brand awareness and promote it to a highly targeted group of people.

Adwords is useful when you target searchers with a very focused buying mindset. They seek a very specific solution and your aim is to position your company as a solution provider.

But Facebook, with its focus on demographic and interest targeting is ideal for generating awareness about you product or brand – often to people who might not even know it exists.

And that’s for a number of reasons:

Facebook gives you highly powerful targeting options

The social network knows its users better than anyone else. It knows their age, gender, interests, likes, dislikes and behavior. And it enables you to target people based on these and many other characteristics.

Custom Audiences

Facebook allows you to advertise to people who might already know you too. Custom Audiences tool allows you to create a list of people to target with advertising based on list of emails, Facebook IDs or phone numbers.

You can use Custom Audiences to reconnect with stale customers or reward your best buyers.

Lookalike Audiences

Similarly, you can create a list of people who share the same characteristics as your top customers and might be likely to be interested in your products or services.

5. Don’t Expect Results Right Away

The biggest advantage of using Adwords is that it can drive targeted almost right away.

Facebook Ads on the other hand might take longer to generate results.

Therefore, when advertising on Facebook you should focus on long-term goals instead of hoping for a quick sale.

Most users are not going to click on an ad first time they see it.

Since they don’t know you, they need to develop trust through interactions with the brand – ad exposure etc. After seeing the ad for few times, your audience is going to get more familiar with the brand or product and might be likely to click.

You should however pay attention to your ads frequency not to overdo it.

Good article but it ignore the often forgotten (and biggest part of Adwords)…the content (GDN) network (and even search partners for that matter). In many ways they work like a hybrid of FB style ads and search.

Hey Grant, Thanks for the feedback, totally agree, the article is mainly focused on the Search side of AdWords. While I agree that GDN is huge, in our experience most of the SMBs using AdWords and approaching Facebook Ads are not using GDN.

Trackbacks

[…] 5 Google AdWords Habits You Must Kick to Succeed with Facebook Ads: Although Facebook is considered part of the PPC arsenal, that doesn’t mean it performs the same as search focused channels. Check out this article to see how you might be hurting yourself by applying the same strategies in Facebook that you are in Search. […]

Don’t miss our next Webinar!

Join AdEspresso on Feb. 13th for our exclusive webinar with Dennis Yu, How to Build a 6-Figure Facebook Ads Agency! During this 1-hour training Dennis be covering everything you need to know to grow your agency and onboard and service clients in the right way.

Follow us

This site uses cookies and other tracking technologies to assist with navigation, monitor site usage and web traffic, assist with our promotional and marketing efforts, and customize and improve our services, as set out in our privacy policy